Going deeper into Linux - Speeding up the 'Wreck'

It's amazing how "failures" lead to knowledge sometimes. First, as i wrote in previous posts, Memory Burned my laptops motherboard. I decided not to fix it as motherboards of TX1000 are not 'stable' in time. So, builded a wreck working laptop out of two destroyed ones, but with far lower system specifications than the one i had. So, SPEED issue rose up !

Asus and Acer don't have their UL30JT and 3820TG models ready yet, so i have to stick to the wreck until one of the two is out.

In a way, i was forced into digging for "enhancements" in hardware and software level. In a short period of time i found various tweaks. The two most signicant ones is HDD acoustic management settings and for linux, the XFCE environment ! XFCE was there but i never tried it as i had no reason before. With 'Wreck'... i had to try it!

Let me say that wreck was doing fine with GNOME when running 2~3 programs at the same time... but not more than that. Even with acoustic management set to "SCREAM if you have to, but GIVE ME SPEED!!!" the performance was dropping from good to 'just ok' with some 'poor' moments. So, last night added XFCE in the blend for try-out. And YES ! It rose the speed way up!
I'll stick to XFCE on wrecky since i have no interface lags anymore ! I'm still testing it and don't know the tricks of the new interface yet - but for sure - speed is so much better now and i am still using the same programs (notifications etc) as in gnome environment :)

Hard Disk Performance

I accidentally found a utility today in linux to read/alter technical hard drive parameters. I checked my current drive and as i saw samsung by default had the drive acoustic management setting set to 0

(0 = quiet, 254=speed).

Guess what - i prefer speed over noise ! I changed the value to 254 and got a vast boost in performance ! Viva la linux ! F* uSoft ! :))
Meanwhile, there will be no need to alter any acoustic over performance parameters soon because of the new HDD technology coming out - the Flash based drives, aka SSD (solid state disks)

iPad everywhere! Will you be one more Apple victim ???

You all heard about i-pad. You already know that it doesn't have a camera, a usb port (apart from usb cable to connect it to a PC or MAC), it's not multitasking capable, heavy and not easy to use for long etc. But even what it has, it's problematic. See the link here for users complains about i-pad's wifi.

Meanwhile - see how apple fanatics hide the "truth" from people with camouflage.

"Web performance analyst Gomez says a majority of popular Web sites are optimized for the iPad and deliver faster browsing than on the popular netbook PC category of products".

So, this "analyst" claims that ipad in SOME CASES is faster than netbooks in rendering webpages. It's so stupid claim - because i-pad does NOT render half of the page, which is flash (the reason that netbooks delay is the flash loading process - some flash animations etc are enormous in size (Several MBs have to be transfered from hosting server). But look for yourself here

Computer died !

My TX1000 motherboard died two weeks ago, after testing some clients RAM modules on it !
I had no mobile computing system until today - i "builded" a Laptop out of 2 broken ones given to me by clients (one of them had a broken screen and the other had a burned motherboard).
This system has 512MB of DDR RAM, 1.7GHz Centrino (first generation) processor and 60GB IDE HDD. Well... i thought of installing Ubuntu on it. Well well... if it had decent screen resolution (anything higher than 1024x768) i would keep it for veeeery long since ubuntu 10.04 on it after some recent kernel updates just FLIES ! Almost as i am using my "dead" TURION 64bit 4GB RAM system. I'll stick with this unit until ASUS UL30JT or ACER 3820T comes out. Really, i am very impressed of the performance ! Back in business !

Damn Laptops !

I am looking for a laptop replacement for my 'aged' TX1000 tablet. I am buying an Intel system this time (tx1000 is AMD based) because Intel's run cooler on compact laptops (the ones under 14") and perform better with better energy efficiency. So... it's been 3 days now going thru ALL major brands and i CAN'T FIND A GOOD LAPTOP under 14" !!!
My Requests is DDR3 RAM, HDMI port, eSATA port, webcam, N wifi, bluetooth and FOR GOD'S SAKE ... I DON'T want the laptop running on a GREEN processor with 'just ok' performance !
Almost all new laptops under 14" carry those ultra low voltage cpu's (green) that score around '1000' in passmarks tests. A typical CPU (not an ultra low voltage) scores around 1600 in same tests. That is 60% more !
Also, i want a decent mid-range graphics card, and not an Intel Chipset graphics set. Something like nvidia G230 or an ATI equivalent.

To sum it up, i need DDR3 ram, Proper CPU (like P8600 or T6600), and an avarage graphics card. And guess what... it's impossible to find one !!!
Technology is far behind my needs !



The best i found is a DATED asus laptop. Amazing specifications for it's time (2007). It's ASUS F6VE series, and the specs are:

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T9550 (2.66GHz, 6MB L2, 1066MHz FSB)

13.3" WXGA Glossy LCD (1280x800, 16:10)

ATI Mobility Radeon 4570 with 512MB GDDR2 VRAM

Atheros AR928X 802.11n + Bluetooth 2.0

4GB DDR2 800 SDRAM (2GB x 2)

Great CPU, Great GPU chipset, N wifi, but DDR2 ram in GPU and system :\

I'll have to wait until the customers worldwide start complains about the ultra low voltage performance levels. Hopefuly i7's will come into the 13" scene. Or at least 14" laptops !

And yes, i know that DDR3 is not much better if your bus is running on lower speed, but i am not buying a System with RAM that's going to be obsolete anytime soon.

As long as tx1000 works (i have a problem with it's usb's) i'll stick with it or i'll jump to the chunky 15.6-ish ones...

Trance is good but ...

Where has the swing been hiding from me all those years ??? I declare 100% Swing lover ! The Key to opening the swing world is the Sing-Sing-Sing as performed by Billy May Orchestra. Since then, i am digging deeper and deeper in it ! At the point i have swing everywhere ! In car - at home - at fingers (on Sax). It's totally uplifting !

Office 2007 and gCDEmu on linux

Today i managed to install -easily- the Microsoft Office 2007, including the SP2 upgrade on my Linux machine because i had some picture resizing problems in OpenOffice beta. The OpenOffice 3.2 starts significally faster than 3.1 (1/3rd of time).
Also i found an alternative to daemon tools after some searching. It's named gCDEmu and it mounted even a nero image without any problems.
Installation of Office 2007 on linux took me way too less time that it does when i install it on Superior Systems running Windows ! I didn't expect that since linux it's not it's native environment. I used Crossover (a more advanced version of Wine). I also tried mediacoder 64bit but it won't run in my 64bit ubuntu. I'll have to try with mediacoder 32bit which will of course be more combatible since the x64 mc was in beta.